Seer
by Masako Moonshade
Summary: He knew her long before he met her. He knew she would be his angel, his goddess. And he knew that someday, someday soon, she would leave him. 6/7, T for adult situations.
1. un

Disclaimer: I don't own 9, 6 or 7. So there.

AN: First of all, thanks to Ryosei Takahashi Hime, who proofread and edited this for me, and then talked me into posting it. Secondly, I'm doing Six a bit differently this time-- in this particular version, his visions are on all the time, completely flooding his senses 24/7, and it's a struggle for him to sort out what's going on where and when, or even to focus on one thing at a time. Because of this (thirdly), this story is more than a little disjointed. I apologize for that in advance.

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.1.

His earliest memory was of something that hadn't happened yet. Maybe it wasn't a memory at all—maybe it was just a vision, dreamed over and over until it was cemented in the deepest crevices of his mind. He couldn't tell for sure. And to be perfectly honest, he didn't entirely care.

He moved through a field of bullets and bodies, feeling dizzy—that's not where they had been, that's not where they would be—that body should be three feet to the left, not there—such details were sketchy and far too apt to change. No, he focused on the things that did not change: the Walker that thundered through what had once been a street, the walls that had been scorched and blasted into rubble, the posters, and there—there!—the car. His car.

Not his car, really—it belonged to the people inside it—but he'd seen himself in that back window so many times he half expected to find his footprints worn into the leather.

He settled into the spot with ease—it felt comfortable, right, like it had been made for him—and searched the road. The Walker marched past, its mammoth foot coming dangerously close to crushing the car's roof above him, but he didn't cringe—he'd seen it before. It never hit.

And besides that, it wasn't important. _She_ was important. She was what mattered. And she would be running down that street, ducking between bits of rubble (these he didn't bother checking—they changed too often to be important), and searching for the tools her friend needed to operate on her other friend's broken eye. She wouldn't expect to find him. She wouldn't even see him at first, until she dodged a spray of bullets—_that_ spray, to be exact—and looked up. And there he was, as he had always been, staring down at his rescuer, his angel, through the window of his car.

She ran to him, so fast she seemed to fly. Maybe she did fly—he remembered feathers on her, and the skull of a bird—but he couldn't be sure where or when she wore those pieces. Definitely not here. Here she was just herself, pale and slender and strong and beautiful.

He forgot to breathe, overwhelmed by the visions, the memories, the premonitions of what would happen—

"Are you all right?" she asked, and he only had the courage to nod breathlessly. Best not to chase away this divine creature with his clumsiness. "Can you run?"

Another nod, but as she reached for his hand he pulled away.

"Careful," he whispered, holding up his too-sharp fingers. He'd cut her before, or he might. Didn't want that to happen now. "Don't want to hurt you."

She smiled at his concern. The way she smiled at his drawings, but not quite the way she would laugh when 5 picked him up and put him on his shoulders and danced with him around a magical contraption of sound. He hadn't made her that happy yet. He would, though. That smile filled him with butterflies, and when she laughed the butterflies all poured out and flew all around them and he felt he could fly with them, he was so happy.

He wanted to keep seeing her smile, but he couldn't just yet. First she had to turn away—the back of her head was pretty too—and run, him following close at her heels. He knew he had to pay attention to this part—the road she took changed all the time, so he couldn't run it from memory. But he knew where they were going. He would have recognized the Sanctuary anywhere.

It was big and imposing and had pretty windows full of color and light and pictures, and inside his friends were waiting—One and Two and Three and Four and Five and Eight (but only after the very end would he and Eight be friends) and someday Nine would come too. But that was a long way off. No need to worry about that yet.

She brought him inside and walked him up to the leader of the group. One sat on a massive throne and glanced down at him with cold scrutiny. Suddenly Six remembered why he became so fidgety around the first of their kind.

"Um…hi," he squeaked. His voice sounded small and bumbly, and suddenly he was embarrassed to be there, looking like an idiot in front of Seven and One. He didn't remember it being so uncomfortable. His averted eyes fell on an empty nook on the chamber's side. It was the place that he would one day fill with his drawings before everything burned to the ground. He thought he should point that out. "I…I like to draw."

One's eyes narrowed derisively. 'A useless habit,' the leader would tell Eight once he and Seven were gone. 'A waste of time and energy.' Six hung his head at the yet-unspoken insult. He didn't even want to look back at Seven. He was scared what she might think of him just then.

"Is… is your ankle feeling… any better?" He mumbled, trying to be polite. If nothing else, the question certainly caught One's attention.

"_What are you talking about_?" the leader demanded. What Six had said had been far too right and far too wrong. He wasn't supposed to know about One falling and hurting his leg. He wasn't supposed to know that the Scientist had to twist the joint back into proper place. He wasn't supposed to know that the ankle still hurt One now and then. Because all that had happened before even 2 woke up, and he'd never told anybody. "Get out of here," he sputtered, and then he turned to Seven: "Take him to—to the watchtower or something."

Seven obeyed, though the entire time she looked quizzically between One and Six. Not like she was looking at a freak or a madman or something stupid and disgusting. Just curious. And maybe just a little impressed.

The expression was nice on her.


	2. zwei

Disclaimer: I don't own 9, 6 or 7. So there.

AN: Continued thanks to Ryosei Takahashi Hime, who proofread and edited this for me.

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.2.

He fell in quite nicely with the others. Nicely enough, anyway.

One decided to give Six a nook of the throne room, to give him ink and paper and let him draw to his little heart's content. One said it was so he could keep an eye on him. Six knew better. One recognized what the visions were, what they could be used for, and he wasn't letting that sort of power out of his sight. Six didn't mind. At least they were doing _somebody_ some good.

Eight didn't seem to be as happy about that. He glared at Six more often than he had any right to, and sometimes when One wasn't watching he stomped on the artist's projects, just to be mean. He used to be the only one who shared the throne room with One, and he didn't like to share. Most of the time Six swallowed his cry of protest—that just made it worse, he knew, he'd always known—but he couldn't help the feeling of frustration when his drawings were ruined before he had a chance to understand them.

That's where Two came in. He started to scold Eight for his vandalism, saying that he was collecting and studying the drawings in hopes of understanding them better. Six knew it was a lie—that Two wouldn't see any significance in them until he started to draw the Source, and even then not until he met Nine—but it was a lie Eight believed, and the bullying subsided when the guard had two pairs of eyes to watch out for.

Anyone Two liked was liked by Five—he was easy to understand that way. And even when Two was busy, his student would come and talk to Six sometimes (when he wasn't drawing—nobody talked to him when he was drawing, because that would be bad). He didn't seem to mind Six's tiny, stammering voice and tried, more than a few times, to cheer him into talking. Which was funny because Six wasn't sad. Not really. Not in front of Five, anyway. He tried not to think about the sad things when the others were nearby.

Three and Four were always wonderful to see—he was glad they'd live to see the new world. They were so bright and excited and eager to know everything. There wasn't a single one of his drawings they hadn't examined, not a thread of his hair or a tip of his finger. His hands especially interested them—Seven almost had to pry the twins off him so he could draw again.

And then there was Seven.

She didn't ask Six to talk or explain or anything like that. She brought him paper when she could find it in the Emptiness, and ink, and she'd talk to him and laugh with him and never try to make him answer her. He was happy just listening to her voice, and she was happy to be listened to. Nobody else did much listening—One didn't care, Two and Five were usually too busy to hear a word she said, the twins tried to glean every iota of understanding from her words, and Eight was hardly even interested in things he understood. But in Six she could confide. It was an honor and a privilege, and he loved it with every fiber of his being. He listened intently and drew as he listened and sometimes—just sometimes—he would interrupt her stories, for just a second.

"Can you… ah… Can you sit still for… just…" he mumbled, interrupting a narrative about her fight with a Beast. She stopped pacing and cocked her head to the side and looked at him with that pretty, quizzical look.

"Sure," she said, sitting down. "Why?"

"I… I…ah…" He shouldn't have said anything. He should have done the drawing from memory. But she looked curious, and he didn't want to lie to her. His eyes clamped shut as he mumbled a reply: "I wanted to draw you. To practice," he added lamely.

To his unbridled delight, she smiled. "All right. What would you like me to do?"

"Ah—ah—sit here," he said, pushing a large matchbox toward her, into a beam of light that leaked through the window. Graciously, she sat. "And… and put your hands here… and here…" he tapped the box lightly with his fingers, indicating the spots. "And your face—move your face to—ah—" Instinctively, he reached out to correct her pose, and one of his sharp fingers brushed her cheek. He pulled back like he'd been burned, horror rising up in him. If he'd cut her—if he'd hurt her—

"Sorry," he squeaked. She just stared at him for a moment, her gaze unfathomable.

"Which way am I supposed to look?" she asked calmly, taking his hand and returning it to her face before she replaced her hand on the box.

A thrill raced through him. He was touching her. She'd allowed him to—she'd wanted him to touch her. If the Machine killed him now, he would die happy.

"This way," he breathed, turning her head with the softest push. She didn't flinch, didn't cry out, and his fingers didn't cut or catch. She just sat there, mirroring the pose he'd imagined-- her hands stretched out behind her, lounging back in an expression of wistful hope. Of all the people his visions had shown him, he'd never seen anyone so brave. Or so kind.

"You can… you can keep talking if you'd like," he said as he retreated to his ink and paper. Again she smiled—that beautiful, beautiful smile—and slowly began another narrative. A different one this time, not about beasts and machines but of a sunset she had seen once, when she'd stood at the farthest reaches of the emptiness. She described the color, the play of light, the way the very air seemed to turn to gold around her. He copied her figure on the paper as carefully as he was able, tracing every line reverently, saving her face for last, and all the while images past and present swam through his head. His breath caught as a new vision took him—the one she narrated—letting him see the reds and golds and the rising kiss of indigo as night crept up to meet day, and in the center of it all was her.

He'd been wrong to call her an angel before.

She was a goddess.


	3. san

Disclaimer: I don't own 9, 6 or 7. So there.

AN: Continued thanks to Ryosei Takahashi Hime. I mean, really thank her. I shoved this entire story down her throat in one sitting, and she still graciously edited the entire thing for me.

And yes, short chapter this time. I know. The next one will be longer.

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.3.

The air tasted wrong that day. Gritty and metallic and bitter in his mouth, washing over his eyes and suffocating him.

It took him entirely too long to realize what that meant. He knew this taste. This feeling. The color of the sky, the feel of the wind—he knew it. And it was wrong—oh so wrong.

What if he was too late?

Without warning, he abandoned his inks and papers and raced from the throne room, tripping and falling over his clumsy feet and leaving black stains on the ground where he pushed himself up again. She was hurt, she was in pain—how close had the Beast come this time? Had she managed to jump out of the way in time? Had she been distracted? Had she gone left? Right? A hundred thousand variables ran through his mind, all different, all adding up to different outcomes, each more awful than the last.

"Two! Two! Get Two!" he cried as he tore through the halls of the sanctuary. Two could fix her. Two could put her back together. Two could save her before the pain became too much and her eyes closed and wouldn't open and—

"Seven!" his voice broke as he uttered her name. She was outside the sanctuary, not yet within the building's shadow. She was on the ground, shaking, her back torn open and her eyes squeezed shut. A line of disturbed earth snaked behind her—the path she'd crawled, alone, when she'd escaped her attacker. All that way, alone, with nobody to fix her or help her or take her hand and tell her everything was going to be okay.

He'd failed her.

"Seven," he whispered, kneeling beside her. Behind him One had stopped at the Sanctuary's threshold. Two kept running to meet them with Five following close behind. Eight was crouching low, his knife readied to drive off whatever Beast might lurk nearby. Three and Four watched from a window, holding each other tight, not daring to investigate for fear of what they might find. Six had seen it all before, and he'd known it would happen, and he should have done something about it. _So why hadn't he?_

Why hadn't he stopped her? Why hadn't he saved her?

Together Two and Five picked her up and began carrying her out of harm's way and into their workshop. Six followed them all the way, hovering around them in a mild panic until the two mechanics left to get the proper tools.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, taking her hand in his. She cringed but gripped his fingers tightly. "I'm sorry—so sorry—so so sorry—" Her eyes focused on him, afraid, more afraid than she had been before his panic, asking the question she couldn't verbalize: _am I going to die?_

"No, no, no, no, no," he said quickly. "No. You're going to be okay. You're going to get better. And you'll be there to see everything—the end of everything and the beginning of everything else, and you're going to be there and be okay and—"

He didn't know how she could smile through her pain, but she did. She didn't understand quite what he'd said or why he'd said it, but it made her feel a little better, even if her ribs were sticking out at odd angles and her canvas was torn and her mangled spine sparked and flared at intervals.

"You're going to get better," he whispered before Five ushered him out of the workshop. "I promise you're going to get better."


	4. nne

Disclaimer: I don't own 9, 6 or 7. So there.

AN: (Thanks, Ryosei) At last we get to the gushy romance bits. You knew it was coming. And forgive me, this is the first gushy romance I've written since Worth Fighting For, so I'm a bit rusty.

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.4.

Though the worst of the damage had been repaired, Seven was officially bedridden until Two and Five could find the proper utensils to make more delicate repairs. The canvas on her back had been shredded beyond repair, and Two had been forced to patch it entirely with a swatch of red felt.

With nowhere to go, she turned her attention to Six. At first, she just invited him to come to her room to draw, so she wouldn't be so alone while she waited. It had been simple enough—draw and listen and sneak glances at her once in a while and get her anything that she might need.

And then she asked for a handful of beads. She'd collected them from the emptiness for the past few weeks, hoping to use them to decorate her gear. And now was as good a time as any. Six rushed to bring them to her, almost tripping over himself in the process.

But then he had to give them to her. He fidgeted and fiddled, trying to hold onto the treasures and deposit them one by one in her hands, but it didn't work quite right. A whimper of frustration escaped him, and she frowned thoughtfully.

"It's all right," she said, taking the beads from him and setting them on the ground beside her bed. "I've got another idea. Sit down." She patted the edge of the bed, and he seated himself on it tentatively, careful not to nudge her as he did.

"You're allowed to get closer if you want," she told him. He just tapped his fingers together nervously, averting his eyes. There was concern in her voice now: "You don't have to if you don't want to."

"Don't want to hurt you," he mumbled, still tapping.

"You won't."

"I'm… sharp," he tried to explain, holding out his hands for her to see. "And you're hurt, and I don't want to hurt you."

"You didn't do this to me," she said gently, taking his hand. That was okay, as long as he was careful. Her hands were metal. He couldn't cut through them by accident. "You helped the others find me, remember?"

"I should have stopped it." He squeezed his fingers into a fist, careful not to let them catch on her wrist. "You got hurt—I shouldn't have let you get hurt—I should have—"

A swift tug on his arm made him overbalance—before he knew it he was leaning over her, held aloft only by his free hand, which had torn into her pillow just beside her head.

He shuddered as he stared at the torn fabric. That might have been her face.

"Listen to me, Six," she said firmly. She still had one of his hands captive, and with her free hand she held his face steady, making sure he wouldn't look away. It was uncomfortably, thrillingly, dizzily close. "I don't blame you for what happened. Do you understand me?"

He nodded.

"And I'm not afraid of you, either. You don't have to worry about hurting me."

"But I might—if I—"

"Accidents happen," she said. "But whatever you could possibly do, it's not nearly as bad as what the Beasts are capable of." He whimpered in protest, but she stopped him before he could speak. "I'm not going to stop hunting them just because something might happen. And I'm not going to give up on you just because I might get a little cut."

For a long moment she was silent, waiting for his reply. He just stared, dumbfounded, searching his mind for his visions. Is this where it happened? Is this where he…? Hard to tell. He didn't remember. Answering for him, she took his hand and placed it on her cheek, holding it in place with both of hers.

"See? It's all right."

An electric shiver shot through him. "Uh-huh…" She was so soft, so smooth.

She released her grip on him. That should have been a signal to pull away and get up and return to his drawings, but he had forgotten how. He was caught up in the feel of her skin, in tracing the delicate lines down her throat, to her shoulder—

A part of him knew better. A part of him knew that it wasn't—what's the word?—_proper_ for him to be touching her this way, that it was irreverent, disrespectful, a violation of personal space and all those other things that One talked about all the time. But he wasn't listening to that part of him, too caught up in the glory of his goddess.

Only the sound of her laughter could pull him out of the vision-within-a-dream that reality had become.

"See what you've been missing?" she mused, her head cocked impishly to the side. Suddenly, he was all too aware of who and where he was, of what he was doing. Seven was closer than he thought she should be—a few fingers' breadths away at most.

His breath came in shallow gasps, his head was whirling, but he remembered this image. This scene. He'd had this vision. Not once—hundreds of times. Over and over again, since before he could remember why or how. And this was his favorite part.

He leaned in and kissed her, just like he'd practiced a hundred thousand times in a hundred thousand visions. He waited, a thrill of fear electrifying the sheer joy he felt—what if she didn't like it? What if he was doing it wrong? What if she changed her mind this time? But, after a careful pause, she returned the kiss. No. Not just returned. Leaned into it. She enjoyed it. She loved it.

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer, careful to touch her only with the palm of his hand, his fingers splayed so they couldn't cut into her flawless skin. Careful not to disturb the delicate parts of her body that Two still needed to mend. Careful to show her—to prove to her with every instant of the kiss—exactly how he felt.


	5. daso

Disclaimer: I don't own 9, 6 or 7. So there.

AN: (Thanks, Ryosei) Forgive me for being late. I'm recovering from an overload week.

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.5.

Their relationship was no secret. It was private, of course—confined to Seven's room for the most part— but it would be impossible to hide for long. Not when her face smiled down at him from so many of his pictures. Not when he snuck off to see her every night. Not when 5 forgot to knock before he came in to check on Seven, and found her thoroughly distracted. For the most part the others respected their privacy—they didn't pry, they didn't talk about it in front of them, they didn't give any funny looks. For the most part.

One was the exception.

"I have had enough of this nonsense," he growled, pounding his staff against the floor. Seven didn't even bat an eye. Six cringed, but they couldn't see him. This was just a vision—a vision that he knew was real, even if he didn't know when, and in the vision he was nowhere to be found.

"I don't see why you should care," she said coldly. "This is between me and him. It has nothing to do with you."

One's eyes narrowed dangerously. "With me?" he echoed. "No, this involves all of us. Your shenanigans put the entire group at risk!"

"Don't be ridiculous," she snapped, though there was something in her eyes. A flash of worry that she didn't want anyone to see. But Six saw it, and so did One.

"You are distracting my Seer," he said, pacing around her.

"He's not yours."

"He is useful only when he is focused," One went on. "An impossibility when you spend all your energy _corrupting_ him." Six found himself hating that word. It was dirty and ugly and the sound of it hurt Seven. But she wasn't the type to let herself be hurt. Not without fighting back. And now she was going to do something about it. Now she was going to say something scalding and make One regret he'd even mentioned it. Now she was going to stop him.

She pushed his staff aside and walked away from him. And One watched her go, a smirk on his face.

The vision worried Six. It hadn't happened yet—had it?—no, not yet. He would have known if it had. That meant he still had time. To fix it, to undo it, to convince her that One was wrong and everything was going to be okay.

By now her wounds were mended with only the splash of red on her back to prove that she'd once been hurt. She invited him to explore her, and once the last of the repairs had been made he dared to accept. He traced over every inch of canvas, reveling in the texture, the warmth, the grace, and all the while her hands examined him ever so tenderly. More than once he got lost in a vision as they shared the exchange, feeling her hands on him in the past, the present, the future, all at once and all over and it left him breathless and reeling.

Another vision struck him, strange in its allure, of his fingers wandering through other places, hidden places that he shouldn't be able to reach. He couldn't wait to try.

"Ah…can I…?" he breathed, fingering the button that sealed her chest. She smiled at him, a little dazzled and a little confused, but she nodded.

Slowly, carefully, he opened her up, exposing her delicate inner workings to the light. Two's repairs had been masterful; the tiny pieces that held her together seemed to glitter inside her. Like stars. Like diamonds. He reached inside her, just barely brushing them with the pinpoints of his fingers.

She shuddered at his touch, and he almost retreated, frightened he'd hurt her. But there was no pain in her expression. Just pleasure. Unspeakable pleasure.

"Seven?" he whispered, tracing the edges of gears and screws with his fingertips. A delighted sigh was her only response. "I'm… I'm happy. Here. With you. And I couldn't be happier, so…ah…" She kissed him long and hard, her own nimble fingers opening the buttons on his chest. Jolts of ecstasy raced through him at every touch, and he found it hard to concentrate on anything. Just one thought, running an endless loop through his mind:

"I love you."


End file.
